In my school district teachers are working on report cards now, they go home in early December. That stress helps me remember why I retired. All the one on one assessment, record keeping, computer glitches – and the comments. As a parent I would open up my kids’ report cards, skip past all the numbers, letters or check marks and go immediately to the personal remarks. Of course I would go back and painstakingly review every grade too – but somehow those comments were always what I looked at first.

As a teacher I knew that even though I was working on 25-55 report cards, each parent was reading and rereading just one. Our report cards were done on the computer and our space for comments was limited to something like 250 characters – including letters, spaces, and punctuation. It was a real challenge to tell parents what their child was doing well, what he or she needed to work on, and also show parents that you care about their child.

When my own children were growing up they always teased me that there is a special code that all kindergarten teachers use to cloak what they really mean in parent acceptable terms.

For example:

‘Play oriented’ really means ‘can’t get her to sit down and do anything productive’

‘fun loving’ is another way to tell parents about their child’s silly behavior

‘exhuberant’ is code for ‘wild and out of control’

‘shares lots of ideas’ could be defined as ‘won’t stop talking’

I don’t claim to have any special ability to create meaningful, concise, pertinent comments; but I am always happy to share. Because we did report cards on the computer I always typed my comments on a word document, where I could keep track of the number of characters, then I would copy and paste them into the report card. That means I have lots of comments saved on my computer. I always wished I could see what other teachers were writing. I don’t expect anyone to want to use what I wrote verbatim, but I thought someone might find a phrase here and there that would be helpful. Please remember how limited my space was – if I had more room on the report card I would have elaborated a bit more.

These comments were from our midyear report card. For many years Kindergarten just did report cards in January and June. When we went to full day Kindergarten we had conferences in October & March, report cards in December, March and June. My comments on the end of the year report card were different because by then I expected children to have achieved the curriculum goals and developed better work habits. Please let me know if these are helpful, and if anyone is interested I will share end of year comments too.

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Every little bit helps! Thanks for the help! I have spent all of Thanksgiving Break working on my comments for 44 Kindergarteners and I have to make sure I do not repeat myself, in anyway, shape or form. I have had many of these students older siblings, neighbors, and cousins. I always have this nightmare that they share “over the back fence.” Plus I want my comments to motivate the child and parent not to start battles – there is only so many ways to say “interactive learner” for those who are still learning to wait their turn, etc.
Again thank you for your suggestions!

Thank you so much. My Transitional Kindergarten report card is the same as k-5 in my district with comments limited to a standard set of response. I am thinking about a brief note at the end of the year to each parent to be enclosed with my thank you for a lovely year /gift. Your end of the year comments would really help me to convey an accurate picture of their child’s accomplishments and areas of need. Thank you again. Sharry

Thank you so-oo much for the report card comments. Many of these apply to my own students, and with a little “tweaking”, they will fir perfectly.
Thank you for all of your marvelous resources. Keep them coming!

I love your comments! Thanks so much for sharing; I struggle so much with writing comments every quarter. So Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! And I would love to see your end-0f-the-year comments! Thanks again!

PLEASE send your mid & end year comments!
These are fabulous.
I agree that parents look at the comments first, THEN the marks.
And in Kindergarten, especially, the comments say much MORE than the marks.
I cannot wait to see your other sets of comments.
I’m working on midterms now.
thank you!

Until this year my school only did formal report cards twice a year, in between we did conferences and less formal reporting. They did change and now are doing 3 report cards, but I only have comments for mid year and the end of the year, which was mid June. I will share those soon.